Sins of Summer (2 page)

Ben caught the slight sarcastic note in her voice, and he studied her face. It was oval with a small straight nose, wide generous
mouth, large green eyes surrounded by dark lashes. Tall and capable looking, she was not exactly pretty, but the short, untameable,
sable brown curls that covered her head like a woolly cap gave her a gamine appeal.

“It was Louis Callahan who asked me to come here.”

“Damn Louis! He should know a girl can’t stay in one of those shacks. Lordy mercy! I could throw a cat through the wall of
any of them. He didn’t say a word about your bringing your family. Then again… why should he? I’m just a woman with barely
enough brains to stay out of the fire.” She stopped abruptly as if regretting her unguarded comments.

The fact that she swore didn’t shock Ben as much as the bitterness in her voice when she spoke of her brother.

“He didn’t know I was bringing my daughter. I just said I wanted private quarters.”

The girl tilted her head so that she could see her father’s face. The shawl had slipped back showing light, straw-colored
hair. An anxious frown drew her brows together over cornflower-blue eyes. She put a hand on his arm and shook it. He looked
down at her and spoke slowly.

“It’s all right.”

“Of course, it is,” Dory Callahan said quickly. “She can stay in here with me. There’s a bunkhouse out next to the barn. Wiley’s
out there. He’ll show you where you can bunk for the night. Tomorrow you can talk to Louis.”

“Thank you.” Ben turned to the girl and pulled the blanket from around her. The coat she wore was much too big for her small
frame. While he unbuttoned it, her eyes never left his face. “Stay with the lady.” Again he spoke slowly. “Stay here.” He
pointed to a kitchen chair.

The girl put her forefinger against his chest, then pointed to another chair. “You?”

He shook his head.

She pushed his hands away and rebuttoned her coat. She shook her head vigorously and pulled the shawl back over her head.

Ben looked up and caught Dory staring at the girl. “She can’t hear.” He spoke impatiently, yet softly as if the girl could
hear him. “She’s afraid I’ll leave her.”

The poor little thing.

“Then stay with her for a while. Hang your coats there by the door.” She smiled at the girl. “It’s been a while since I’ve
had a female visitor. What’s her name?”

“Odette. She doesn’t talk much,” Ben said, shrugging off his sheepskin coat.

“She speaks?”

“When she has to. She was very sick about eight years ago, and when she came out of it, she couldn’t hear. I’m trying to teach
her to read my lips.”

“Can she understand me?”

“Some. She understands most of what I say, but she’s used to me. She can read and write. She’s no dummy.” He said it defensively
as if he’d had to establish that fact before.

Dory wanted to know more about this strange pair, but his tone told her it was time to change the subject.

“Would you like coffee and a slice of fresh bread?”

“My mouth has been watering since I stepped inside the door.”

When he smiled, lines in his whiskered cheeks formed brackets on each side of his mouth. His teeth were straight and white
and free of tobacco stains, but Dory sensed that he was a hard man and not the type to be traveling around with a daughter
the size of this girl.

Where was his wife?

“How far did you come today?”

“From Cataldo Mission.”

A small girl appeared in the doorway, knuckling sleep from her eyes.

“Ma… ma, who’s that?”

“Sweetheart! You’ve had such a long nap.” Dory bent to lift the child up into her arms.

“Who’s that?” the child asked again.

“Someone to see Uncle Louis.”

“I gotta pee-pee—”

“Shhh… honey. Excuse me,” Dory said and left the room with the child peering at them over her mother’s shoulder. Her hair
was short, curly and bright red. Yet the resemblance was so strong Ben had no doubt that they were mother and child.

He looked down to see Odette staring after the woman and little girl, then quickly trying to smooth her hair back with her
palms. She pulled the collar of her dress out over the heavy sweater she had worn beneath her coat.

“Are you hungry?” he asked silently, his lips forming the words slowly. She smiled and nodded. He smiled back. “Say it.”

“Hungry.” Her lips formed the word silently.

“Say it,” he insisted and pointed to his ear.

She grinned impishly, then said, “Hungry. You?”

“You bet.” He pinched her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “You little imp. You like me to nag you to talk,” he said affectionately.

Dory, with the child in her arms, stood in the doorway watching the exchange between Ben Waller and his daughter. It surprised
her that such a rough-looking man would be so patient and gentle with the girl. The Callahan men didn’t have a patient bone
in their bodies, much less a gentle one—except for James. He was young yet. Give him time and he might turn out to be as hard
as Louis and Milo.

“This is
my
daughter, Jeanmarie,” Dory said with pride as she lowered the little girl to the floor. The toddler headed straight for Odette
and took her hand.

“What your name?”

Odette quickly looked at Ben. He silently repeated the question while the child looked from one to the other.

“Odette.” The name came hesitantly.

“I’m three.” Jeanmarie held up three fingers. “Soon I’ll be four.” She unfolded another finger. “I had a kitty cat, but… it
run off. You got a kitty cat?”

Odette looked puzzled.

“Come here, chatterbox.” Dory scooped up the child and sat her on a high stool at the table. “She’ll talk your arm off,” Dory
said to cover the silence. “She gets pretty wound up when company comes. We seldom have visitors and never see another woman
unless we go to town. I can’t promise that she’ll get used to your daughter and stop pestering her.”

“I don’t know if Odette has ever been around a child.”

Dory hesitated for an instant on her way to the cupboard to get cups and plates.
He didn’t know if his daughter had ever been around a child.
That was strange. What kind of man wouldn’t know
that
about his own daughter? The girl might not even be his daughter. She certainly didn’t resemble him in any way, although it
was easy to see that she adored him. Dory gave a mental shrug. Regardless of who and what they were, their coming was a break
in her dreary existence.

“Sit down. Mr. Waller, would Odette like milk in her coffee or coffee in her milk? Sometimes I color Jeanmarie’s milk with
coffee. It makes her feel grown up.”

Ben repeated the question and Odette answered aloud.

“Coffee… please.”

Dory Callahan flipped a loaf of bread from a pan onto a smooth board. The sleeves of a flannel shirt were rolled to her elbows.
It sloped down over well-rounded breasts and was tucked neatly into the surprisingly small waistband of a heavy wool skirt
that hit her legs a good six inches above her slender ankles. She wore black stockings and fur-lined moccasins. She was not
a small woman, and yet she was feminine.

Ben could not help wondering about her child and why she had made a point of making it perfectly clear that she was
Miss
Callahan. Unmarried. Yet the child was her flesh and blood. A man would have to be blind not to see it.

“What your name?” Jeanmarie asked.

“Ben Waller.”

“My name is Jeanmarie. I’m almost four.” She held up four fingers. Ben didn’t know what to say to that so he didn’t say anything.
“I got a doll,” she said looking expectantly into Odette’s face. “Uncle Louis broke her leg. Uncle James fix it. Want to see
my picture book? It’s got a monkey.” Jeanmarie giggled behind her hand. Odette remained silent. After a long pause, Jeanmarie
looked at her mother and her lips began to tremble. “She don’t like m-me—”

Dory set the coffeepot back on the stove and took the chair next to her daughter. She put her palm on the child’s face to
turn it toward her.

“Listen to me, honey. Of course she likes you. Who wouldn’t like a sweet, pretty little girl like you? The reason she isn’t
talking to you is that she can’t hear what you’re saying to her.”

“I talk loud.”

“It doesn’t matter how loud you talk, sweetheart. Her ears have been hurt and they don’t work.”

“Did she fall down?”

“No, honey. She was very sick.”

“Is she sick now?”

“No. But when she was, it broke something in her ears.”

“They broke?” The child tilted her head to look at Odette, then quickly scooted off the stool and around the table. “I kiss…
make ’em better.” She threw her arms around Odette’s neck, pulled her head down and kissed her first on one ear and then the
other.

When Odette got over her surprise, she smiled with pure pleasure and murmured. “Thank you.”

With her pixie face wreathed in smiles, Jeanmarie climbed back up on the stool and turned the full force of her gaze on her
mother.

“Is him her uncle?”

“He’s her papa.” Dory sliced the hot bread, passed it to Ben and Odette and moved the butter dish to within their reach. “Help
yourself to the butter and jelly.”

“I ain’t got a papa,” Jeanmarie said. “But I got Uncle James.”

Ben noticed that this announcement had no effect at all on the mother, who smoothed jelly on a slice of bread, cut it, and
put it on her daughter’s plate.

“Don’t know when I’ve tasted better bread,” Ben said.

“Could be you’re just hungry,” Dory replied. “My mother was the best bread maker in the territory. She claimed the secret
to making good bread was to dissolve the yeast in potato water. In the winter she’d load a dishpan full of warm bread and
take it to the cutters up in the woods. Before they started the winter cut they would make sure a path was cleared for the
sleigh. Sometimes, even then, Mama had to walk a mile through deep snow. She loved the woods and—”

Her voice trailed when she realized she had been chattering like a magpie. Weeks went by when the only adult conversation
she had was with old Wiley in the bunkhouse and an occasional grunt from her brothers, who took turns coming back to the homestead
on Sunday.

Ben liked sitting across the table from the woman, listening to her voice. He sensed her loneliness. He was strangely comfortable
with her, although he could feel the sharp edge of her curiosity about him and Odette.

Silence, broken only by the child’s chatter, stretched while they finished off most of a loaf of bread. Then the thump of
heavy boots came from the porch, followed immediately by the opening of the door.

The man who stood in the doorway looked down the table at Ben, then advanced a step into the room and slammed the door shut
behind him. He was a big, deep-chested man wearing the clothing of a logger: pant legs stuffed into the tops of his boots,
a mackinaw, and a wool cap. Snow lay on his shoulders and clung to his wiry beard. He took another step, his eyes, hard and
piercing, holding on Ben.

“Who the hell are you and what’er you doin’ in my house?”

The greeting was as shocking to Ben as a splash of cold water. A chill crawled over his skin, but he met the man’s angry gaze
without a flicker of the emotion that tensed every nerve inside him. He pushed himself away from the table and stood.

“For God’s sake, Louis! He’s the man you sent for,” Dory said before Ben could speak.

“Benton Waller?”

“Yes,” Ben said. “I wrote that I’d be here between the tenth—”

“—And… the fifteenth.” Louis rudely interrupted. He threw angry, suspicious words at his sister. “What’s he doing in here?”

“I invited him in.” Dory stood, her face red with anger and embarrassment.

“Hired hands are not invited into
my
house,” Louis shouted.

“Your
house?” Dory retorted, her voice low and quivery. “One fourth of this house is mine and I’ll invite in who I please. Nothing
in Papa’s will gives you the right to say who comes in and who does not.”

“I’m head of this family. You’ll do as I say, or—”

“Or what, brother dear? James won’t let you throw me out. We’re two against two.”

“That don’t mean shit!”

“You’re back a day early,” Dory said lightly, then added with heavy sarcasm, “Did you hope to catch me having a high old time
with old Wiley?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had a high old time,” he sneered.

“You’re pitiful, Louis. Mean-minded and pitiful.”

“Thank you for the coffee and bread, ma’am.” Ben felt an acute dislike for Louis Callahan, and the need to leave before his
fist connected with the man’s face. He reached the coat rack in two strides and unhooked Odette’s coat as well as his own.

Odette followed Ben and stood close beside him. She could tell by his movements and his facial expression that he was angry.
Something had gone wrong. Something Ben would tell her about later.

Louis seemed to notice Odette for the first time. “Who’s this?”

“His daughter, you stupid, bull-headed dolt. You didn’t tell the man he would have to share quarters with twenty or more horny
timber beasts.”

“Stay out of this,” he snarled. “This is company business.”

“I’ve got a one-fourth say.”

“You got nothin’ to say. He should’ve told me he was bringin’ womenfolk.”

“Blaming
him!
That’s typical of you, Louis,” Dory said scathingly.

“We’ll be moving on.” Ben’s terse voice broke in. “If it wouldn’t be asking too much, I’d be obliged if we could stay in the
barn until the storm blows itself out.”

Dory came around the table. “I apologize for my brother’s rudeness. Let Odette stay with me and Jeanmarie until you’re settled
in another job.”

“Don’t worry about Odette, ma’am. I have the offer of another job down on the Saint Joe, less than a day’s ride from here.”

“Malone!” Louis shouted, making Ben wonder if the man ever spoke in a normal tone. “Is that goddamned Malone after you?”